Recently, the Republican National Committee obtained and released a video of Clinton in Australia promoting the TPP as “the gold standard,” while Donald Trump suggests Clinton’s current opposition was solely for show, a feint for election purposes.

He [Trump] said Clinton took “a leading part” in drafting the 12-nation deal, noting that the former secretary of state “praised or pushed the TPP on 45 separate occasions, and even called it the ‘gold standard,'” according to prepared remarks.

“Hillary Clinton was totally for the TPP just a short while ago, but when she saw my stance, which is totally against, she was shamed into saying she would be against it too,” he said. “But have no doubt, she will immediately approve it if it is put before her, guaranteed. She will do this just as she has betrayed American workers for Wall Street throughout her career.”

If Clinton recognizes our struggles, the emerging sentiment–especially post Brexit–and is against the TPP, then she must encourage her platform members to vote with her, not against her.

This Café Call asks you to put pressure on the DNC, platform members, and our Congress to take a stand.

DNC general contacts:

Send an electronic letter/message to https://demconvention.com/platform/

Write your own letter using the Public Citizen template (provided at the end)

~:<> ~:<> ~:<> ~:<> ~:<>

More US residents viewed TPP as probably ineffective than probably effective (46% to 40%) while many are unsure (16%) according to Ballotpedia, although earlier, less specific surveys find roughly 65% oppose free trade deals, perhaps indicating that lack of knowledge regarding the TPP itself is the issue. If you’re unfamiliar with why the TPP is such a bad deal, here are some “YUGE” reasons to work against it and a quick video introduction.

How would this erode our capacity to govern ourselves? How would corporate profits be put before our interests? Well, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement(ISDS) is an instrument of public international law, that allows corporations (investors) to sue or dispute a foreign government’s policies or laws if it has adverse or potentially adverse impact on their bottom-line. As the Economist stated:

IF YOU wanted to convince the public that international trade agreements are a way to let multinational companies get rich at the expense of ordinary people, this is what you would do: give foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever a government passes a law to, say, discourage smoking, protect the environment or prevent a nuclear catastrophe. Yet that is precisely what thousands of trade and investment treaties over the past half century have done, through a process known as “investor-state dispute settlement”, or ISDS.

wouldn’t employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next. Maybe that makes sense in an arbitration between two corporations, but not in cases between corporations and governments. If you’re a lawyer looking to maintain or attract high-paying corporate clients, how likely are you to rule against those corporations when it’s your turn in the judge’s seat? (emphasis added)

Transparency & Accountability: While the full document is now available, as Trevor Timm of the Guardian notes, it was only made so because it was leaked. Further, although

the contents were kept completely secret from both ordinary Europeans and Americans, yet was easily accessible if you’re a giant corporation. So naturally, the terms are heavily tilted toward big business at the expense of the environment, health and safety standards.

As well, potential involvement by Clinton–in terms of whether she helped it advance or even had a hand in crafting language while serving as U.S. Secretary of State—is unknown. Further, last year IBT Editor in Chief, David Sirota, filed a FOIA request for Clinton related correspondence. However, after being told these would be available by April 2016, the Obama Administration now refuses to release these until after the elections. As Sirota stated earlier this month:

Clinton’s shifting positions on the TPP have been a source of controversy during the campaign: She repeatedly promoted the deal as secretary of state but then in 2015 said, “I did not work on TPP,” even though some leaked State Department cables show that her agency was involved in diplomatic discussions about the pact. Under pressure from her Democratic primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, Clinton announced in October that she now opposes the deal — and has disputed that she ever fully backed it in the first place.

Subsidy of multinationals: Potential losses by governments–at taxpayer expense–means subsidizing corporations. Under NAFTA Canada was sued by conglomerates five times, of which 40% of legal challenges were for environmental policies and the USA over 15 times. While the US has never lost a challenge, Canada has paid hundreds of millions of dollars on ‘lost profits’, or what the former Ontario Environmental Commissioner argues “amounts to a form of taxation of the Canadian public by multinational corporations.” He further reveals the ‘rigging of the system’ in favor of corporations by exposing the fallacy of the key corporate claim:

How can these corporations claim the loss of future profits is real money? Future profits have to be earned in the marketplace. There are no certainties in markets, only risks that must be addressed. Companies must convince customers to make a purchase presumably in a marketplace fraught with uncertainties and active competitors.

If a corporation can prove that they have lost future profits with certainty, it can only mean that they are operating in a monopolistic environment. That’s the only way they could be assured of profits. If that is the case, they are not operating in a free market. It’s not the responsibility of government to support such a broken system. It’s the job of the government to break up those those monopolies, restore the free market, and in doing so, remove the guarantee of future profits that they claim to have lost.

Ironically, subsequent to the rejection of the Keystone Pipeline the US is facing two legal challenges and is being sued for $15 billion by TransCanada.

really troubling…It seems to indicate that savvy, deep-pocketed foreign conglomerates could challenge a broad range of laws we pass at every level of government, such as made-in-America laws or anti-tobacco laws. I think people on both sides of the aisle will have trouble with this.

Although the NY Times went on to note that “The United States Trade Representative’s Office dismissed such concerns as overblown. Administration officials said opponents were using hypothetical cases to stoke irrational fear when an actual record exists that should soothe worries.” Trade Secrets notes, however, that

Food safety issues have been part of trade disputes for decades. The U.S. has tried to overturn EU food safety rules at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The U.S. complained that EU restrictions on planting and importing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and beef from cattle fed with hormones banned in Europe are not based on science and unfairly restrict trade. TTIP and TPP could grant new legal rights for agribusiness and food companies to sue, or threaten to sue, governments over rules and laws that protect consumers and the environment.

The Environment: A key concern as more ISDS provisions are written into agreements is that climate change policies will also be weakened or nullified in response to active and potential lawsuits. This not an ‘irrational fear.’ Bill Moyers notes:

In large part because of ISDS, groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have become outspoken opponents of Obama’s current deal with Pacific Rim countries — the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — and another trade agreement with European countries that is still being negotiated, the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The environmentalists argue that while the administration is pursuing agreements with countries like China and India to cut emissions, and backing action through the UN Paris climate pact, it simultaneously is pushing new trade deals that, like NAFTA, would allow foreign fossil-fuel companies to sue to protect their interests and keep pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
…[Take for example], a suit against Germany by a Swedish energy giant, Vattenfall. In 2009, after the German government imposed stricter water regulations on a Vattenfall-owned coal plant near Hamburg, the company used ISDS to sue for €1.4 billion, saying the regulations violated Vattenfall’s rights under the multilateral Energy Charter Treaty. The case was ultimately settled after Vattenfall won a victory in a separate suit in German courts. Under the settlement, Germany weakened the regulations in a way that the EU later said was harmful to protected fish species.

Trade Imbalances: Have our ‘free trade’ agreements worked? A recent study by the Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch of past U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) projections and outcomes was disheartening:

The new study reviews USITC trade balance, job and economic sector projections in the statutorily required reports for the three most economically significant trade pacts prior to the TPP and finds the government study on each pact proved dramatically inaccurate – not only in degree, but in direction. (emphasis added)

What the report found is that the actual deficit in 2015 resulting from these three agreements exceeded $425 billion dollars, as depicted in the attached figure.

The agreement should have gone further to protect labor rights, and there are serious concerns with provisions related to the right to health, free expression and privacy online. The agreement’s labor chapter and associated bilateral agreements do not have adequate labor rights safeguards for countries with poor labor rights records, like Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, and Brunei.

The TPP’s partners will include oppressive undemocratic countries like Vietnam and Brunei, and other countries with problematic human rights records like Malaysia, Singapore, and Mexico. Lawmakers who focus on religious freedom may be alarmed at how Vietnam locks up leaders of unsanctioned churches. Advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights are horrified at anti-LGBT laws in Malaysia and Brunei.

And just about everyone is alarmed at pledges made by the Sultan of Brunei to operationalize a form of Sharia (Islamic law) that would mandate whipping homosexuals and stoning to death persons engaging in sexual activity out of wedlock.

And, there will be no place to ‘hide’ for citizens attempting to find respite virtually, trying to share and get out information, or endeavoring to keep their data private. The Electron Frontier Foundation offers these choice warnings regarding the TPP:

Expand Copyright Terms: Create copyright terms well beyond the internationally agreed period in the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The TPP could extend copyright term protections from life of the author + 50 years, to Life + 70 years for works created by individuals, and 70 years after publication or after creation for corporate owned works (such as Mickey Mouse).

Escalate Protections for DRM (aka Digital Locks): It will compel signatory nations to enact laws banning circumvention of digital locks (technological protection measures or TPMs) [PDF] that mirror the DMCA and treat violation of the TPM provisions as a separate offense even when no copyright infringement is involved. This would require countries like New Zealand to completely rewrite its innovative 2008 copyright law, as well as override Australia’s carefully-crafted 2007 TPM regime exclusions for region-coding on movies on DVDs, video games, and players, and for embedded software in devices that restrict access to goods and services for the device—a thoughtful effort by Australian policy makers to avoid the pitfalls experienced with the U.S. digital locks provisions. In the U.S., business competitors have used the DMCA to try to block printer cartridge refill services, competing garage door openers, and to lock mobile phones to particular network providers.

Create New Threats for Journalists and Whistleblowers: Dangerously vague text on the misuse of trade secrets, which could be used to enact harsh criminal punishments against anyone who reveals or even accesses information through a “computer system” that is allegedly confidential.

Place Greater Liability on Internet Intermediaries: The TPP would force the adoption of the U.S. DMCA Internet intermediaries copyright safe harbor regime in its entirety on other countries. Chile and Canada have gotten exceptions to allow their forward-thinking regimes that better safeguard user rights to stay in place. However, the TPP would still help entrench the United States’ flawed takedown regime as an international standard.

Adopt Heavy Criminal Sanctions: Adopt criminal sanctions for copyright infringement that is done without commercial motivation. Users could be jailed or hit with debilitating fines over file sharing, and may have their property or domains seized or destroyed even without a formal complaint from the copyright holder.

Simply put, if the TPP was passed, the likelihood that we could share all of this content free from restriction, would be reduced! There is a wealth of material on the internet with quite cogent analyses available. Hopefully, we’ve offered you enough of a sample to prompt your own research–and take action against its approval.

I write today as a constituent asking you to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The TPP was just signed in New Zealand. But it is nothing more than a 5000-page doorstop unless majorities in the House and Senate approve it and the president signs that implementing legislation.

Now that the deal has been signed, every elected official must take a public position on the TPP. The majority of Democrats in the House oppose the deal, as does a large bloc of Republicans. All U.S. presidential candidates with more than five percent support in any state oppose the deal, and vibrant TPP opposition movements are growing across the country and around the world.

As one might expect for a deal negotiated behind closed doors for seven years with 500 corporate representatives serving as official U.S. trade advisers but the public and Congress cut out, the TPP would:

– Make it easier for corporations to offshore American jobs. The TPP includes investor protections that reduce the risks and costs of relocating production to low-wage countries. The pro-free trade Cato Institute considers these terms a subsidy on offshoring, noting that they lower the risk premium of relocating to venues that American firms might otherwise consider. It would ban Buy American procurement preferences, offshoring our tax dollars instead of reinvesting them in our communities to create jobs here.

– Push down our wages by throwing Americans into competition with Vietnamese workers making less than 65 cents an hour. The TPP’s labor rights provisions largely replicate the terms included in past pacts since the “May 2007” reforms forced on then-president George W. Bush by congressional Democrats. A 2014 Government Accountability Office report found that these labor rights provisions had failed to improve conditions on the ground in countries subject to the terms in past U.S. free trade agreements, including Colombia, which also was subjected to an additional Labor Action Plan similar to what the Obama administration has negotiated with Vietnam.

– Flood us with unsafe imported food. The TPP would allow new trade challenges against our safety standards and inspection policies. This is especially dangerous given that Vietnam and Malaysia import massive quantities of shrimp to the U.S., significant amounts of which are now rejected as unsafe under current policies.

– Include notorious violators of international human rights. In Brunei, LGBT individuals and single mothers can be stoned to death under Sharia law. In Malaysia, tens of thousands of ethnic minorities are trafficked through the jungle in modern slavery.

– Eliminate most of the seven Multilateral Environmental Agreements that are the standards for the Environment Chapter. Past U.S. trade pacts have required the terms of seven key environmental treaties to be implemented and enforced by agreement signatories. The TPP eliminates all but one of these.

– Expand the scope of domestic policies that can be challenged by corporations, including allowing investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) enforcement of World Trade Organization intellectual property terms and new challenges to financial regulations. This is especially dangerous because the TPP would double U.S. exposure to ISDS challenges – empowering an additional 9,200 corporation to use ISDS tribunal to attack our laws.

It is clearer than ever that this is not a deal you should support.

Please write back to me to let me know that you will vote “no” and do whatever you can to safeguards our jobs, wages and health by stopping this sinister agreement.

Hi all, I’ve made this a very general appeal hoping it will reach the widest of audiences. Thank you all for links, information, and, most importantly, the inspiration to gather this in one place. Please do share this broadly!

I’ve already signed Rep. Ellison’s petition, as he sent it out to all his constituents earlier but will sign all the other ones as well.

I emailed Rep. Collin Peterson, who is a DINO, earlier as well and received a nice email response back that he opposes the TPP. He’s a Big Ag guy and he said its bad for the farmers and he would never support it.

Oddly enough, Peterson, who votes with the Republicans much of the time, also supports Bernie. He said he will show up at the Convention if it looks like the Supers are going to throw it to Clinton and vote for Bernie as he’s a Super..he never goes to the Convention usually. I guess he likes to “stick it” too the machine. Just goes to show you, you never know who your friends are on this issue until you ask!

I emailed Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken around the time fast track authority was being voted on…never heard back from Klobuchar..she’s completely in the tank for Clinton, Obama & the corporations. Franken was against the TPP at the time, but has since changed his position and now is using waffling words about just removing some of its clauses. I’ll try emailing him again.

Thanks for putting this Cafe Call together @chasingorion its great that you have all the petitions, letters and other info all in one place. It makes action so much easier!

..actually, I think it would be great if it were posted in the BNR for all the Birdies to take action on. I know I really appreciated all of your posts in the Bernie diaries that had the petition attached.

Thanks for doing that @polarbear 🙂 I think it needs to be posted there daily as some may have missed seeing a previous comment regarding it.
Don’t worry about the trolls, they just make themselves look bad.

@grapevines
Do you want to post it there? Seriously, anyone want to transfer it–feel free. I think it would be good to do. I don’t think I’m the one to do it though. I get the sense many over there ignore me–you know, the cat never has my tongue (at least not for long) so some who would be moved to act might be put off. Just my sense.

I’ve already been in and out quickly for the BNR for my daily dose of stress..don’t think I can stomach going back again today..sorry..I’m hoping bear will do it or anyone else..also Nomandates did add a blurb on a tweet regarding it in the diary.

Corporations can “sue” us in Investor-State Dispute Tribunals, composed mostly of revolving door corporate lawyers. They will usually win, and countries have already shown that they will back down and toss whatever legal protection for the earth, for us, they had in order not to pay the billions of dollars of fines.

In addition, we cannot escape from it unless all 12 signatories agree, essentially trapping us in this secret give away of our sovereignty. Yes, NAFTA does it too, and we can fight that later, I’m hoping. But for now,

I hope to point anyone interested to this diary with its wealth of information. Even after all this time so many still do not seem to see the dangers of TPP, or have even really heard of it! Not something TrumpTV, I mean the MSM, is covering. Especially since Ed Schultz was given the ol’ heave ho over at MSNBC.

Over there this morning I threw out an estimate of TPP being brought to a vote somewhere between the November election and Thanksgiving. I figure that Obama would want it to happen after the election and don’t they basically take Thanksgiving through New Year off? And I imagine that Obama wouldn’t want to wait until January.

TPP seems like an awful move to me. I’ve tried really hard to do my research and I do not like what I’ve learned.

Thanks Magsview. One of the reasons I put in all the stuff is that this is an issue many groups can coalesce around. And, you’re absolutely correct that most don’t know what the hell the TPP is or what it does. Also, I made it candidate friendly (despite the birdies 🙂 ) precisely because THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE FUTURE president, it is about what the hell Congress is going to do now. This has been fast-tracked so there will be no opportunity to modify…none, it is what it is, how it is. We need to kill it before November by making folks clear that it needs to be filed in the circular folder.